Brown Sugar chords by The Rolling Stones

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Brown Sugar | Chords + Lyrics

Intro

||: C/E G C | C F/A C :|| x4
||: Eb/G Ebadd9/G Eb/G | C F/A C |
| Ab Db/F Ab Eb/G Bb | C F/A C :||

Verse 1

| C | C |
Gold Coast slave ship bound for cotton fields.
| F | F |
Sold in the market down in New Orleans.
| C | C |
Skydog slaver know he’s doin’ all right.
| Bb | C |
Hear him whip the women, just around midnight.

Chorus 1

| G5 | G7 | C | C F/A C |
Brown Sugar, how come you taste so good, yeah?
| G5 | G7 | C | C F/A C |
Brown Sugar, just like a young girl should, ah ha, now.

Instrumental 1

Verse 2

| C | C |
Drums beatin’ cold, English blood runs hot.
| F | F |
Lady of the house wonderin’ when it’s gonna stop.
| C | C |
House boy knows that he’s doin’ all right.
| Bb | C |
You should have heard him, just around midnight.

Chorus 2

| G5 | G7 | C | C F/A C |
Brown Sugar, how come you taste so good, now?
| G5 | G7 | C | C F/A C |
Brown Sugar, just like a young girl should, yeah, yeah!

Instrumental 2

||: Eb/G Ebadd9/G Eb/G | C F/A C |
| Ab Db/F Ab Eb/G Bb | C F/A C :|| x4

Chorus 3

| G5 | G7 | C | C F/A C |
Aww, take it all Brown Sugar, how come you taste so good?
| G5 | G7 | C | C F/A C |
Oh, let me tell all about, the Brown Sugar, just like a black girl should, yeah

Verse 3

| C | C |
Now, I bet your mama was a tent show queen.
| F | F |
And all her boyfriends were sweet 16.
| C | C |
I’m no schoolboy but I know what I like.
| Bb | C |
You should have heard them, just around midnight.

Chorus 4

| G5 | G7 | C | C F/A C |
Brown Sugar, how come you taste so good, Baby?
| G5 | G7 | C | C F/A C |
Oh, no, no, Brown Sugar, just like a young girl should, yeah, yeah.

Instrumental 3

| G5 | G7 | C | C F/A C |

Chorus 5

| G5 | G7 | C | C F/A C |
I said, yeah, yeah, yeah, woo. How come you, how come you dance so good?
| G5 | G7 | C | C F/A C |
Yeah, yeah, yeah, woo. Just like a, just like a black girl should.
| G5 | G7 | C | C F/A C |
Yeah, yeah, yeah, woo.

Outro

Brown Sugar’s chords and progressions

The chords for Brown Sugar’s intro and instrumental section are extremely complex, should you be using traditional music theory to describe them.

However, should you have Keith Richards to describe them it would just be down to “moving the same idea over here”.

Here are the first intro chords C/E – G – C – C – F/A – C.

This is played on strings 2-4 and is essentially the same idea moved from G to C. This is a classic rock n roll riff that Keith next will manipulate and move to unexpected fret numbers.

Here’s what happens next: Eb/G – Ebadd9/G – Eb/G. A similar idea, but instead of going to Bb, we extend the Eb chord to add9. This is followed by the same chords we played at first: C – F/A – C.

Next, we move to Ab: Ab – Db/F – Ab, followed by Bb (as expected a few bars ago), like this: Eb/G Bb. Finally, we go back to C – F/A – C.

It’s probably better to just read these chords, thinking, and now I’m moving the idea over here like Keith would explain it to you. Here are the full intro, and later, instrumental chords:

||: C/E G C | C F/A C :|| x4
||: Eb/G Ebadd9/G Eb/G | C F/A C |
| Ab Db/F Ab Eb/G Bb | C F/A C :||

Once the verse kicks in, we are in the key of C using the I – IV – I – bVIIx – I. Much easier!

| C | C | F | F |
| C | C | Bb | C |

The chorus starts on the V chord, like this: V – I – IV – I.

| G5 | G7 | C | C F/A C |
| G5 | G7 | C | C F/A C |

In between the verse and chorus, we get the end of the intro again. Finally, during the outro, a completely new chord progression appears, it goes like this:

||: Gm Gsus2 G5 G7omit3 | Gm Gsus2 G5 G7omit3 |
| Cm Csus2 C5 C7omit3 | Cm Csus2 C5 C7omit3 :||

By the time The Roling Stones released Brown Sugar they were well established

As the opening track and lead single from The Rolling Stones’ 11th studio album Sticky Fingers, Brown Sugar did very well on the charts back in 1971.

As #1 in the U.S. and Canada and #2 in the U.K., it was also a success in New Zealand, Australia, Germany, Ireland, and Switzerland where it scored another #1.

By now, Stones already had a huge back catalog of hits such as (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction, Honky Tonk Women, Sympathy For The Devil, Jumpin’ Jack Flash, Ruby Tuesday, and As Tears Go By.

This collection of hits made them one of the best-known bands in the world and the bad-boy alternative to contemporary rivals The Beatles, who would break up the following year.

The Stones famously never quit and instead go on and release Wild Horses, Angie, Miss You, Beast Of Burden, and Start Me Up.

Brown Sugar in particular just about made it onto Rolling Stone magazine’s 500 Greatest Songs Of All Time as it claimed the #495 spot.

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